


The Feast of Fools and Lords

by tiptoethrough



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: F/M, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-11
Updated: 2013-04-11
Packaged: 2017-12-08 05:14:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/757456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tiptoethrough/pseuds/tiptoethrough
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for got-exchange prompt: Davos/Stannis, gen or slash: Davos becomes Lord of Misrule for the Feast of Fools(and has to organize everything ;)) while Stannis has to serve under him. Up to you whether this is fluffy, kinky, angsty or just friendship fic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Feast of Fools and Lords

When the first glow of the Crone’s Lantern appeared on the edge of the sky, the streets of King’s Landing grew brighter: lights dotting the side of Rhaenys’ hill where the manors had beacons atop their roofs for the occasion; orange, red, and yellow scraps of fabric flicking against the crumbling cement sills in Flea Bottom; and the lit tower windows of the Red Keep, the brightest points of light against the dark sky at night save for the Lantern itself. Fools and Lords each, no matter how different or similar, prepared for the festival by spreading enough light through the capitol that the Crone’s guidance was always assured throughout the days of misrule to come.  
  
The Lantern had finally been seen on one of the hottest days of their long long summer. As Davos stood against the walls of King Robert's throne room, arms pressed into the cool stone in an attempt to diffuse the heat, he felt as overtaken by excitement as those around him appeared. The faces of the ladies, lords, and knights were equally as flushed, their eyes as bright, as those of the servants lingering in the doorways. But none, it could be argued, were redder or gladder than King Robert's.  
  
"How long until we feast?" Robert demanded of the Grand Maester Pycelle in a booming voice.  
  
Only a couple of hours, Davos figured by the height of the sun in the sky. Most of Robert's meals would be considered a feast by any other citizen's standards. Though it was hard to imagine Robert thinking ahead beyond his next meal, at times, he was referring to the feast that occurred on the night when the Crone held her Lantern aloft, the feast when all manner of chaos was indulged in and encouraged, with the assurance that the Crone would not lead them astray, no matter what path they took in the hours between dusk and dawn. A maester who'd forged his chain with links for astronomy could calculate how long it might take the star to reach its highest point in the sky. The hall was quiet, waiting for the stooped old man's response.  
  
"Five fortnights, roughly, Your Grace."  
  
"Only five, eh? Well, what man here wants to be made a Lord for a few fortnights?"  
  
Only a peasant could be given this appointment, but the King would never indulge the many clamouring for it who held the lowest servant's positions in the castle. The Lord of Misrule had to be organized and hard-working, but most importantly, _common_. With the Crone's guidance, even a fool should be able to organize a party fit for a King, after all. Shouts rang through the room from cleaners, cooks, stablemen and guards wanting the position.  
  
Davos knew things could only go downhill when Robert's smile grew wider as his eyes fell on Davos himself.  
  
"Eh! What about our onion smuggler here?"  
  
Davos was not one to pit his voice against a King'. Few were. But Davos knew well the voice that did speak out.  
  
"He is not a commoner, Your Grace. Ser Davos is a knight. He cannot fill this position."  
  
Robert grunted without turning to look at his brother, who sat stiffly toward the front of the hall. "A common-born landed knight ought to be common enough to fill this role; you'd know that if you weren't so stiff. What say you?"  
  
With the King's eyes on him, Davos could not say no. "Your Grace, I would be honoured."  
  
"The only thing we need now is a steward..." The stewardship of the feast was assigned to someone of high birth, so that while a peasant was raised to the lofty heights of lordship, so might a Lord be demoted in another act of general chaos. "...Stannis."  
  
A King's words are never _not_ to be considered a direct order, Davos had learned at some point in his time at the palace.  
  
Across the crowded throne room, Davos imagined he could hear the grinding of Stannis Baratheon's worn down teeth.  
  
  


* * *

 

When Davos was a child, his favourite part of the festival was the Crone's torches. The festival was marked by the Crone’s Lantern, falling on that time when it was seen to be directly overhead. As the star wandered from north to south, the minstrels and festival fools did, too, trying to keep up with the star and make it to the largest holdfasts for the night when the Lantern was highest in their sky. There was not enough money to be made in Flea Bottom to warrant stopping, or even entering that quarter of the city, but on that night after their carts trundled past, above the spires on the hill in the distance, the torches lit up the sky.  
  
Davos had never known why they were called the Crone's torches, for they looked nothing like the flickering, dim lights of a small fire; they were explosions in the sky of all colours and shapes, and for most of his life they had been the only part of the festival Davos had experienced, unless you counted the higher-than-average numbers of drunk men and women clamboring through the streets. He found that he knew surprisingly little about them, considering they had been something he'd looked forward to for many of his younger years.  
  
The vendor Davos had contacted was supposed to be the greatest at making Crone's torches in all of Westeros. Long ago, he explained, they had been made from stone dragon's eggs. Now, such things were too rare.  
  
"A mixture of powders is placed within the chiselled hole," the man told them, gesturing to a deep hole with a string dangling from it, drilled deep within a large rock. "We set this rope alight and use trebuchets to launch them into the sky... By the time it is overhead, the mixture explodes."  
  
"Isn't that dangerous, exploding rocks over the King's head?" Davos asked. He didn't want to be the Lord of Misrule whose Crone's torches murdered Robert.  
  
"We don't fire them directly above the palace, my Lord, but over the bay."  
  
"I'll have to give word to any captains in the area to bring their ships into harbour," Davos mused, more for confirmation than anything else. As many good and loyal stewards will do, his allowed him to make those decisions he was capable of himself, though Davos did not always feel capable. This time, Stannis was silent at his side. Davos felt more a fool than a lord, expected to make final calls on things he knew little of.  
  
"How many torches will you be ordering, my Lord?" the torch-maker asked.  
  
Davos looked askance at Stannis, who shook his head, mouth set grimly.  
  
"How many were ordered last year, and how ran the cost?" Davos asked. With every task he attetempted to complete, he grew more assured that little thought went into Robert's anointing of him as Lord of Misrule, except that it would offend Stannis (Stannis himself was convinced that Davos was given the position solely so that Robert might ignore the standing of knight that Stannis had insisted he have; like many of Robert's actions, Stannis believed it was designed to make him look a fool, and Davos was slowly beginning to think his perceived slights may perhaps be realer than he knew). Davos knew little of organizing festivals, and even less of how to manage the crown's festival expense limits-- which didn't seem to exist outside of "we'll borrow the money if we have to."  
  
In the end, it seemed easiest to do what the men of years past had done, though Davos was left with the lingering feeling that those men, and he, had made the wrong choice. The vendor, now with crown money promised to him, seemdd more assured than Davos that all would be well. They finished the deal, and Davos waited for Stannis to leave. He looked into his lord's face, but Stannis merely stared back, seeming to wait as well, for what, Davos was unsure. Stannis inclined his head toward the door, and Davos started suddenly, remembering that every peasant in King's Landing, every commoner, Lord and Lady, expected him to act as the Lord, and Stannis, the steward. He felt a fool, then, too, not because everyone in the area had seen his flub, but because he was failing to fulfill the duty Robert had given him, and with Stannis as witness. He took his first few strides, and heard Stannis' boots ringing on the floor as he fell into step behind him. The sound unsettled Davos' stomach.  
  
As they mounted the hill path that led to the Red Keep, Stannis spoke for the first time since they'd entered the vendor's small temporary shop.  
  
"The crown's debt will soon overthrow my brother's reign, at this rate," he told Davos.  
  
Rarely had Davos felt so unsure as he did then. "My Lord, should I have chosen differently? It seemed the expense was too great, but the King expects--"  
  
"I am not a lord."  
  
Davos stopped in the crowded street, and was bumped into by someone in a hurry. He hardly noticed. "Heh?"  
  
"I am not a lord," Stannis repeated. He turned to Davos. "I am your steward. This festival is silly, but, for now, assisting you in its organization is the duty the king has set me." Davos saw tension in Stannis' neck, just below his jaw. "I am not a lord. You are. Whatever choice you make for this festival, I am confident it will be the best one. I can have a list made up of all the captains who've already made port, and any who enter the city in the next few weeks. We should contact them, as you said."  
  
Stannis was silent again as they entered the Keep. He was not one to waste words; he refused to indulge in pleasantries he didn't feel were true, and he found small talk and gossip useless. But Davos worried that this was a different silence than his usual sort-- a quieter, angrier silence, the type that suggested Stannis had spent many of the past nights staring out over the bay, wishing he were elsewhere. Stannis did not like King's Landing, Davos knew, and even less the things it represented-- the frivolity, the gluttony of his brother, the... misrule.  
  
Indeed as the days passed, it became evident that Stannis was less and less pleased with his position as steward. It was not that Stannis minded the organizing, the letters to be written and people to visit, Davos thought, but that he minded the organizing of a festival so utterly trivial.  
  
("An excuse to get drunk," Stannis said disgustedly as they special-ordered the spiced ale from across the Narrow Sea. "Robert needs no more of those, we are all used to his drunkenness.")  
  
By the time the night of the feast had arrived, the tendons in Stannis' neck were clearly visible each time Davos saw him, and his ring of hair grew ever smaller. Though the festival planning had gone well, Davos was worried. The ship captains had brought their ships safely into harbour; the spiced ale had arrived on time; the trebuchets were in position on a hill outside the city gates, ready to hoist the Crone's torches aloft to join her Lantern. But Davos' mind, as he sat on his ceremonial chair next to Robert's, was elsewhere. The Lord of Misrule presided over feast and ceremony, visible and jovial. To ensure that the planning of past weeks went through without hitches, this is what a steward was assigned for.  
  
Even now, Stannis would be waiting for the right moment to light the beacon atop the Red Keep's easternmost tower, that the men would know to begin the torch show. As the sky over the bay brightened with the Crone's many guiding lights, despite his temporary title, Davos had never felt less a fool. Stannis rarely ever seemed to relax, but Davos could not recall a time when he had seen the man so tense as he'd been earlier that day. He wished he could relieve Stannis' stress, but did not know how. No matter how many years Davos had taken his steps just in line behind Stannis, no matter the trust he'd instilled in Stannis and Stannis in him, no matter whether they stood shoulder to shoulder to watch the Crone's Torches from Stannis' office window in years past, sharing in Davos' favourite part of the festival when Stannis would indulge in nothing else, friend was not a word easily applied to Stannis Baratheon.  
  
The attendees of the feast spilled into the banquet hall around Davos, and he found that among lords (and kings) behaving like fools and peasant playing at nobility, even the Lord of Misrule could easily go unnoticed. Robert had drank nearly his fill and would not mind if he didn't see Davos again for the night. He removed his Lord's hat, intending to make his way toward the area of the Keep where Stannis kept his office. With the feast underway, his work was done. He was surprised to find Stannis just outside the door of the banquet hall, watching the proceedings.  
  
They did not speak, but stood quietly together as chaos unfolded. Davos overturned his mind for the right words to say, but in the end, it seemed the situation did not require them as he thought. Stannis did not so much as blink when he gave the Lord's hat to a passing drunkard. Despite the shouting that filled the hall, Davos was much aware of their silence until it was broken.  
  
"Fools," Stannis said, "The lot of them. Our duty is done, at least. The night is young yet, but I'll be glad when the morning comes."  
  
Stannis strode away into the hallway behind Davos. Returning to the feast was so unappealing an idea that he turned to take the same path minutes later. When he did, he found Stannis standing at the end of the corridor, looking at him expectantly. Davos took his first strides, and fell into step behind Stannis. Without pretending to be the lord he was not, he did not feel so foolish, after all.


End file.
